Aah I think I've had this one but it was a later year. I remember it had a long and pleasing finish. It went well with some barbecued chicken.

I opened another bottle of the Brujeria last night and did a side-by-side tasting with the remnants of the Saini. (Not really fair, I know.) I'm gonna stick by the 9.3 rating for the Saini, but revise the Brujeria to 9.0 due to its relatively short- albeit pleasing- finish.

This, in no way, detracts from its 5 value rating.

Did anyone find the Brujeria at a vendor who would ship it? I tried the bigger local places with no luck.

My buddy and I had an Educated Guess with dinner. He thought it compared well with some decent $70 cabs. Anyone else get a carmal flavor in the mix?

I don't specifically remember that. Sounds like a good reason for me to open another bottle and check for it.

Will report back with findings.

Still love this thread. I think Leo just convinced me to shell out for the Forman since that is exactly my type of wine. Still haven't opened my Pride, but plan to on Saturday when I get back from out of the country.

Just got back from Mexico City and was going to drink the Pride as promised. Then, it was such a nice day that I thought, “Chris, you never drink white wine and every time you do you say you should drink more white wine; so I set out to my local wine merchant to purchase a nice pinot gris or some such.” However, when I got there, I got sucked into tasting four different wines, all of the 2011 vintage; a white wine from Piemonte, a Bachhus merlot, an entirely forgettable Pinot Gris from Willamette, and this: the semplicemente vino bellotti rosso 2011. http://www.cascinadegliulivi.it/vini-bellotti-rosso.php
This wine is a blend of dolcetto and barbera grapes with some additional cutter grapes amounting to about 5%. The first word that comes to mind when drinking this wine is “effervescent.” It tastes almost carbonated. In fact, it is uncorked and un-twisted off, but rather capped like a beer. I guess that means I need to drink it all tonight.

I’m a huge fan of cellartracker.com, which Mike L introduced me too back in the day. I’m aging about 50 wines in a reasonable unit and I have them all logged on to cellartracker. I enjoy tracking the change in prices, drinking window, rating, etc. Most of the wines I have in the cellar range in the $50-$100 range, which is big money for me. My weekly drinking wine tends to average in the $15-$25 window, focusing mostly on big cali cab. I was extremely surprised to find that the cellartracker rating for this wine was and 81.5.

For those of you unfamiliar with wine rating systems, I think it is on a 1 to 100 scale, with scoring most similar to boxing. The judges just sort of give it a number, usually a 9 or a 10, bonus points if it knocks you down. An 87 is a “hey, this wine is fine.” A 92 is “**** if this costs $20, I’d kill my grandmother for a case.” I can’t recall drinking a wine less than an 87 that I didn’t purchase at 7-11.
More tangent. I got some wine advice about a decade ago that still rings true today: “Drink what you like, how you like.” Certain wine and food pairing tend to go together. Whatever. Drink what you want when you want. Wine is all about how it tastes to you. A big malbec with trout. Go for it. A sancere with a steak. Sounds good. If you like it, go for it; don’t let perceptions cause you to change your drinking preferences. Personally, I like certain red wines slightly chilled and most white wines toom temperature (I find the cold kills the taste of certain grapes).
Along those lines, the wine merchant recommended slightly chilling the rosso, so I stuck it in the fridge for 3 hours and then let it sit on the counter for 45 minutes. I found that this improved the flavor somewhat. I lack leodoc’s incredible vocabulary to describe wine, but I can say this: the wine was good, but one note. It lacked complexity, other than its faux-carbonation. Following leodoc’s advice, I let it breathe by accidentally passing out on the count for a few hours and then finishing the bottle. I found that unlike most wines, it lost its crispness and the wine suffered.
I’d give this wine an 88. Or, on the leodoc scale, 3 DIAMOND, 3.5 DIAMONDS for value at $20/bottle.

I’m too much of a ludditte to figure out how to post a picture of the bottle.

Also a fan.

Yup.

Generally speaking, chilling will enhance the acidity of a wine; warmer drinking tends to embellish the fruit (or diminish the acid). So yes, depending on the wine's intrinsic structure and how you fashion your tasting experience, doing the above can be preferential.

As an aside, I never allow a restaurant to keep a Chard "on ice" at the table. "Just sit the bottle down, thank you."

It is never too late for an expert opinion on a middling wine. Cab you grab a bottle and let us know your thoughts

My first small recommendation to add to this thread: Pass on the 2011 Alta Vista Malbec. Nothing but cherries and a weak finish.

I has this last night. (Sorry about the canned image. The waiter asked if he could have the bottle and I didn't have the heart to say no.)





It's a 2009 Continuum and it's made by Tim Mondavi in the style that his Daddy employed when he was earning his stripes in the world class club of winemakers back in the 70s. (I found it reminiscent of the '74 Mondavi Reserve.)

I have been a fan of the Continuum for about 3-4 years now and have had vintages back to about 2006. They have been uniformly good, albeit pricey. The best news is that the price has been relatively stable (around $150 a bottle), but the overall quality has been increasing as the percentage of estate grown grapes in the wine is also increasing. (About 80% of the grapes are from Tim's vineyard on Pritchard Hill in Napa.)

The color is a clear ruby, with just enough denseness to fog out my fingers beneath the tasting pour. I suspect the nose of this wine is just now starting to open because it evolved pretty quickly over about 20 minutes. It was refined and pleasing and oozed with a sweet floral accent that I found very appealing.

On the palate, this is a seductive and gracious wine. The fruit is plentiful and spicy and somehow transcends into this middle phase that makes drinking this wine look like a "Bell curve" if you were to plot taste on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. It's a mouth-filling wine and one that I enjoyed immensely with my fresh Halibut Oscar. (Thought I'd add that for 9finger.)

Taste: 9.4/10

Value: + 1/2

WE:

Will look for this tomorrow.

Will not look for this tomorrow.

Urgently need a recommendation for a good bottle of champagne in the 50$ range?

Veuve Cliquot- and it's really not close.

I generally prefer the vintage ones but the NV is also respectable. If you want to impress (will be way more than $50 tho), you could get the Veuve "La Grande Dame." (Way better than Dom and about the same price.)

woah...super fast response...cliquot it is. need to get 3 bottles so vintage not really an option

Thought I'd add the pronunciation in case you're not familiar with it.

Veuve Cliquot = voove clee ko

Just found a bottle of 2012 "The Prisoner." I'm looking forward to drinking it tomorrow night and will post review Sunday or Monday.

Tonight's selection is an '06 Mollydooker Enchanted Path and my preliminary take is that it has a bit of grey around the edge. It reminds me of, well, me. Incidentally, had an '09 Mollydooker Carnival of Love the same night we drank the Continuum.

Will post both Mollydooker reviews tomorrow.

The front label:





The reverse:





The Enchanted Path is one of Mollydooker's two premium* offerings; the other being Carnival of Love. The difference is that Enchanted Path is a Shiraz/Cabernet blend (at about 2/3 Shiraz), whereas the Carnival of Love is a straight-up Shiraz. The US price point is about a fun tic for either.

The 2006 Enchanted Path was the second time this blend had been offered. It was well-received after the accolades garnered by the '05 and I'm certain it would have been quite fabulous three or four years ago. Last night, however, it seemed a bit worn-out. The fruit was still big, but flabby. It just lacked those six-pack abs that I've come to expect from Mollydookers. The tannins were fading and the nose was uni-dimensional.

On the plus side, I'm glad to have tried this wine eight years out and am not sad that I bought it because I now know how these wines are likely to age. It would be interesting to know if using a cork- rather than a screw cap- would have given the bottle longevity. I just don't know.

Here's what I thought.

Taste: 8.4/10

Value:

WE:


*These wines are Mollydooker's premium wines. The Velvet Glove is a super-premium.

Looking forward to your thoughts. I've searched everywhere for the Brujeria, any suggestions?

My overdue notes on The Prisoner...





I read about this wine when nyrugby recommended that I try it. It- like the Educated Guess- was a sterling suggestion. This is a blended wine comprised of nearly 50% Zinfandel and varying proportions of other varietals. But don't expect to get mouthwashed with a monster Zin cause it's just not like that.

The guys that made this wine know what they're doing. The initial nose was fruity, a bit closed, but opened up nicely after about 30 minutes. (I should also mention that this bottle needs at least an hour to establish itself on the palate.) The tasting pour resembled the color of bing cherries which I found perfectly fitting given the cherry/blackberry, fruit-forward taste on the palate. Then the wine morphed into some sort of chimera and showed a plethora of flavors in what turned out to be a remarkably long finish.

In a blind tasting, I'd have been left guessing as to the primary varietal used in this wine, tho perhaps I'd have made an Educated Guess.

This was a luscious and complex wine and one worth the $38 I gave for it.

Taste: 9.2/10

Value: + 1/2

WE: + 1/2

And the reason I mentioned the Educated Guess is because I had the 2012 vintage night before last.





I gotta say that I like this vintage a smidgeon better than the '11 reviewed above. It was jammy and fruity and mouth-filling. IOW, it was my kinda wine.

And at $18, it's simply a 5 value, 9.1/10 taste and a 5 experience given the price.

So yesterday I strolled into this wine store that I infrequently visit and started chatting with what seemed to be a "new guy" working there. I asked him if they had any Moolydookers and I must have seemed sad when he told me no. But he was pretty quick to ask me if I'd ever had the 19Crimes since I was apparently a fan of the Aussie wines and that it was a strong seller among repeat customers. I told him that I'd never heard of it so he gave me the soft sell and I bit. I wasn't disappointed.

The labels provide no hint as to what grapes constitute this wine, nor, surprisingly, does the winery's website. (Note that the label only identifies this as 2013 Red Wine.) I mean it's obviously got some Shiraz and a fair amount of Grenache but I'm at a loss as to what else it may or may not contain.

The nose wasn't a typical Aussie Shiraz. It was a bit more refined and considerably earthier. It didn't have that "kick-your-ass" fruit that the Aussie's seem to pride themselves upon, but more of a "here, enjoy this wine and come back for more" kind of taste. This was a relatively complex and long-finished wine and, given that I'm drinking the vestiges of last night's bottle, I'd have to say it held up remarkably well.

At $14 a bottle, this is like getting Manzel in the 4th round.

Taste: 8.9/10

Value:

WE:

I like how I don't need a wine list when I go to the store and can just pop open this thread instead. Excellent reviews leo doc.

4-5 years from now, we'll reread this thread and either say "Clearly this wine is like the steal of the century" or "I have no idea what he's talking about."

I cannot begin to tell you how flattered I'd be if this proves true.

Absolutely think this thread is great, have sent a link to my favorite wine merchant. Glad you enjoyed The Prisoner. The original winemaker Orin Swift (has since sold that brand) also has a couple others you might enjoy Palermo and if you like grenache one from his location series simply called E. Both are also pretty good values.